Sam Bankman-Fried, the cofounder of FTX and friend/sponsor of Tom Brady, was convicted of seven federal charges by a jury in New York on Thursday.
Bankman-Fried, 31, was accussed of wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering.
He now faces a maximum of 110 years in prison. He will be sentenced in March.
During the rise of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange, Bankman-Fried specifically targeted Brady for a sponsorship deal, because he was (according to Bankman-Fried in the Michael Lewis book Going Infinite) “one of the few people or things in the world that really move our imagination.”
After Bankman-Fried and Brady embarked on their business relationship (here’s a video of Brady and Bankman-Fried), Bankman-Fried said that, “everywhere [he] went, people mentioned that they had heard of FTX because of Brady.”
As Bankman-Fried wrote in a memo to his team (also according to Going Infinite), “No one cares if Coinbase gets Russell Wilson as a spokesperson after we get Brady.”
In return, Brady got $55 million in FTX stock. (His ex-wife, Gisele Bundchen, got $19.8 million.) It all became worthless.
Bankman-Fried was supposed to attend the Rams-Buccaneers game featuring Brady on November 6, 2022. Bankman-Fried couldn’t make it, because FTX was in the midst of the run on deposits that eventually sparked the company’s collapse and, today, Bankman-Fried’s conviction.
Brady was sued civilly for his role in touting what ultimately was a scam. None of it has really stuck to Brady from a P.R. perspective, even though the litigation could take a nice chunk out of his bank account, through legals fees and an potential settlement or verdict.
